Whether it is because of their inherent elegance, grace and majestic beauty…

Or their winter interest….

Or Autumn color against a blue sky…

Or magnificent flower…..

Foliage that can’t be denied…..

A conifer of striking color and dimension…..

Or simply a sacred place to rest and contemplate the world…

Trees are magical, mystical and ever present beauties that we dare not take for granted. They are the life blood of this amazing planet that give us the oxygen to fill our lungs, paint our hearts with color and shade and heat our homes.

Planting a tree is the ultimate act of positivity about the future.

To see more fabulous blog posts from the other Lords and Ladies of the Roundtable please follow these links below:

Inspiration for garden design ideas for the New Year can obviously come from any number of sources. You can fall down the internet rabbit hole of Social Media and lose hours of your life to just Pinterestalone for ideas on anything you can find inspiring, that’s the whole POINT!

People can be an inspiration; a winter walk can bring inspiration, great garden books, and meditating on philosophic ideas, food and cooking, architecture, animals, interior design, all of those and more can be the spark of inspiration. I am not going to list here ALL of the innumerable ways that you can find inspiration in your design life. I am only going to focus on one way here. But, do be sure to check out those phenomenal links above too. 😉

My bookshelf of inspiration!

Last June I wrote this post that struck a chord with a number of you, titled “Looking To the Landscape for Mental Healing”. In it, I referred to one of my most favorite “bits” with regard to “inspiration”, if you have a moment, I think you would find it a great companion to this post.

Chanticleer

My inspiration is so seasonally predictable, so like clockwork, so springtastically motivating- its the Garden Shows that get me revved up! I have only missed one of my local show- the Northwest Flower and Garden Show since its inception 25 years ago. Beginning in January, I start getting the garden itch for new plants, seeds, design ideas, garden art. By the time the show rolls around in the third week of February, I’m positively apoplectic for my fix!

I spend the entire week of the show blogging, photographing and networking with my compadres in the world of Horticulture, Garden Writing, and Design. Getting inspired by the immensity of imagination and effort that goes into one of the largest garden shows in the country is positively exhilarating.

Leaf Magazine, Riz Reyes, Nancy Claire Guth

Before the Northwest Flower and Garden Show I will be heading south to the Yard, Garden and Patio Show in Portland as a Show Judge! Plus taking a couple of days to visit with friends at places like Viscaya to get my plant groove on and take some fun bits home.

Do I have reasons to be extra special inspired THIS year of all years?? – YOU BET I DO! Look at all of the magnificent friends I have, with whom I get the privilege to share my passion for landscape design and horticulture!

To see more fabulous blog posts from the other Lords and Ladies of the Roundtable please follow these links below:

As the sign of the Virgo, my detail-oriented nature is ruled by the mind. Virgos are always analyzing everything, with a penchant for working with very precise and detailed designs on a more focused scale than many signs. I notice everything- when it comes to the garden. In that way, I’m the classic definition of a Virgo, the love of fine points, minutiae, particulars, specifics and technicalities.

I think that’s one reason why I love photographing the garden so much. To me it’s really all about the details. It allows another type of focus that you don’t get when you’re purely experiencing the garden with touch, smell, taste and sounds.

Today, I’ve rounded up a group of fabulous recent pictures that help you understand how I see the details at this late summer/early autumn season. ENJOY!

The angle of the evening light coming through this Hydrangea Paniculata ‘Quickfire’ is exquisite.

A singular Coreopsis ‘Big Bang Solar Cluster’ nestled in this ‘Cirrus’ Artemisia with a bit of ‘Rainbow’ Leucothoe is magical.

Blink and you would miss them!

Tree jewelry? Now THAT’S detailed!!

Taking advantage of the reflection!

The almost clockwise swirrel of the petals on this Echinacea are mesmerizing!

Such architecture in a seed head!

Magnificent view, and magnificent rose right under my nose!

Rhythm in the grasses……

An unexpected giggle that catches you by surprise is always a treat.

This container design shows it’s jaunty nature with it’s offset beret of Acorus grass planted askew and Mexican Feather Grass below that mimics the fun.Also notice how the Poppy seed pods imitate the bumps on the container at the same level too.

A true detail after my own heart. I’m dying to make one of these someday.

Not only a monochromatic color combination, one of my favorite things, but a textural contrast too- BONUS!

This picture represents the realization that this color combination illustrates ALL of the favorite colors of my living room decor. Now THAT is detailed. 🙂

At the Garden Designer’s Roundtable this month we will show you our own gardens. This is no small thing for us, because most of us designers are busy at YOUR house making it look beautiful. And then we get home and experiment in our own gardens so you don’t have to. Truly, I don’t have a plant hoarding issue. Am I selling that well? 🙂 Actually it is true. I buy plants and trial and error them at home fairly frequently, strictly for testing purposes. Still buyin it?

OK, actually we do try out design ideas and test some plants from Growers and Breeders. We try to figure out the million dollar Bunny and Deer deterrent fixes. We use our gardens for our own blogs to show our successes and sad seasonal distresses, but it’s really just our own place to play just like yours, the good the bad and the really really bad. We just don’t usually bare our collective souls like this to the general public.

So, ready or not here is a snap shot of where my back yard landscape has begun and where it is today thanks to my friends at May Creek Landscape.

We downsized from our giant, custom-built dream home in 2007 just before the crash in 2008 to what I lovingly refer to as our “Barbie Doll House”. We bought our current home in the middle of the block in an almost brand new neighborhood about 30 seconds from our former home so that our teenager would be able to finish school and stay near friends until she went off to college.

As a former Real Estate Agent who worked for one of the 5 builders in this planned community I knew the neighborhood well and the small, contemporary San Fransisco lot styles with the alley in the back were just the right amount of maintenance for me to handle. Our side yard property line is right up to the neighbors foundation.

When we bought the home it had already had two owners, most recently 5 Bachelors with a motorcycle hobby. Yup, they were beloved by ALL the neighbors for sure. Not to mention that yard maintenance was not exactly a priority. So, it was a typical example of a NEW fixer upper these days. But, also a VERY blank canvas from the stand point of the garden.

I failed to get shots in 2007 of the gardens, I was too busy cleaning and planting! This pic shows the back yard in 2008, one year after we moved in. This gravel path and the beds on either side as well as all of the plants you see here did not exist at that time.

Back Yard in June of 2009.

I’m pretty sure I spent the better part of the first year simply adding soil to even make it diggable. Yes, that is the most correct Hort-term I could think of for this awful, hard-pan clay soil. Also, as you can see across the back side, privacy is an issue, so my baby Leyland Cypress trees that I started as 1 Gallons are 3 ft. tall in this picture. I also started creating English Laurel Standards from 1 Gallon babies too- wait until you see those now!

The drainage here is abominable. The lawn is just a bog all winter and most of spring until it dries out in summer and then it’s impossible to keep watered. Even the dog didn’t want to walk out there. Luckily all of those big tree roots have been helping to suck some of it up.

Now skip ahead to early spring of this year before any of the color and fluff came on and this was where we were in 2012. My MASTER Plan is about to unfold before your very eyes!

LAWN be gone!! No more mowing and edging- YUCK!

Construction day one, 7 years in the making…. no, waiting, yes, that’s it!

The Gravel base my patio and edging are down.The guys are getting the forms ready for the 3 concrete pedestals for my containers and building my water feature. The pedestals will be covered with slate tiles. Check out the size of my very pruned Leyland Cypress trees and Laurel Standards now!

Ta da! There are still a few tweaks and of course more plants needed. But, for the most part, it’s exactly as I had envisioned it. My landscape crew thought my idea was totally nuts, but now they see the light!

I adore my new veggie bins!!

A cool respite in the shade on a hot day.

More updates on the new back yard to come this summer as I finish planting and getting it just the way I want it, this is only 2 weeks old now! I’ve now bared my garden soul to all of you. I hope you enjoyed what took me a long time to get here.

Please be sure to take a look at what the other brilliant Lords and Ladies of the Round Table have to share as well!

Jane Austen began her second novel, Pride and Prejudice, before she was twenty-one. It was originally titled First Impression because the appearances of the characters created the plot of the novel. The two main characters formed immediate impressions of one another that set the entire story in motion.

"Pride and Prejudice" From Deviantart.com

Imagine the power that your front garden has on the first impression your guests might have about YOU or your HOME. Does it say anything about how the visitor might find the condition of your interior? What could your landscape be saying about your personal style? Does it say anything at all?

No matter what your landscape and climate might be, you have the opportunity to place your own personal stamp on what a passerby or first time visitor may think of you and your home. Small space or large, there are many ways to make it your own.

Even if you don’t have a landscape, some containers can create a big impressions.

Curb appeal or the first impression = A homes CHARISMA

“Landscape your outside entrance–Add a few new flower pots, small shrubs or hanging plants to spruce up the outside. Spending just $400 to $500 on fresh landscaping, according to the survey,can boost your home’s value by $1,600 to $1,800.”Home Gain Survey 2007

As a former high end Real Estate Agent, I could go on and on about improving the first impression of your home. But, I thought some pictures of some landscapes that I’ve worked on changing over the years might be a good illustrator for you too. Unfortunately, I don’t have the original “BEFORE” shots on these homes, I was too eager to just jump right in and get started and forgot them. But, these are all taken over the course of a few years, all of them starting in the second or third year. Enjoy!

Originally, this front yard that blends into the main yard, had a very steep slope of lawn here that was impossible to mow and very little landscaping. The curving wall cured many ills here.

This is the third year, where we just wanted to add inexpensive but bold color until the larger plants
began to fill and mature.

By the fifth year, trees, shrubs and ground-covers began to mature and give a sense of scale.

This was into the second year of improving the “Builder Special” landscaping.

Third year and done up for a magazine here, not bad!

Second year on this side too. Still lots of inviting color and personality.

One year later. I’d say that’s a pretty WOW first impression!

Here is the number one piece of advice that I give my clients when we talk front yard landscape design- You should be able to pull up to the front of your home in the worst weather of the whole year and say WOW! If it looks great for the months that you are not out gardening actively and fully, then THAT is a great front yard!

For more on “First Impressions” from the Lords and Ladies of the Roundtable, please visit the links below. Enjoy!

There seems to be a time cycle in gardens and landscapes of about 10 years. Whether you live in a new neighborhood or an established area of homes, where landscapes ebb and flow with changes and age. New people move into the neighborhood, older neighbors move out and the landscape still remains there growing and changing. But, we often forget to take the long view in the life of large plants like trees. Our Homeowner’s Association’s could stand to take note here.

While we move though our busy lives, trees and shrubs mature and we often don’t realize that they were either planted too close to the house, just planted improperly or are in need of some kind of attention. Either to prevent disease or damage from any number of things until a drastic change forces us to look at it straight on in the wallet.

Time and priorities often make us forgetful about taking the time to properly evaluate the potential damage that can happen to our gardens and properties in a dramatic winter storm of snow, wind or ice. Even a relatively mild climate like the Northwest can be hit by surprise events that cripple the city for days or sometimes weeks. These tend to be the times we look back and wish that we had taken steps to prevent the cost of what it will take to fix the damage.

For example, look at the place where this specimen Paperbark Maple broke. A good Certified Arborist could have helped in this situation. The homeowner here is absolutely heart-broken.

My thoughts in this post are focused not so much on a “How-to” fix the damage but on what money could have been saved and what damage could have been avoided by being even a little bit pro-active in the care and planting of large trees and shrubs before they are irrevocably damaged or hurt. This is an expensive way to operate in home landscape costs and potentially in property insurance or just plain labor to have them removed or replaced.

Here in my area, we recently had a snow, ice and wind event all at the same time during the course of one week. The season had been very warm up to that point thanks to the La Nina winter. But, the experts had also warned us that this would also bring much more stormy conditions as well. When all was said and done, we got power back, everything thawed and when we took a good look around the damage was sad to say the least.

Such an incredible amount of damage could have been avoided by truly simple maintenance done by experienced professionals or a well-trained homeowner – easy!

If you look carefully note that almost every single branch broke where it had been subject to rot.

Thinning out heavy trees such as Maples can keep heavy ice and snow weight from breaking and snapping large branches. Also, making sure that the central leader is not competing with another can keep this kind of damage at bay.

This neighborhood had an entire boulevard of this type of maple tree planted 12 years ago when the builder designed it. I’m sure the landscapers got a terrific deal on 12 foot tall saplings at the time, planted them and that was it. Now there is not one tree on the entire street that is not badly damaged.

The “Maintenance” crew is not trained in taking proper care of trees other than cleaning up a broken branch here or there and raking fall leaves. If the neighborhood had taken the time to hire an Arborist even once every 3-4 years, much of the damage could have been prevented.

This is a great example of a tree planted without adding enough additional soil over the hard-pan clay for it to get anchored. In addition to being planted far too close to the house, this is why I call these situations “The Builder’s Special”. It is incredibly common for trees to begin having problems at about 10 years of age in a stressful period like a storm.

The moral of this story is that you can’t prevent ALL damage from a storm event, but you can be conscious about expensive (in labor, time, and money) and mostly preventable “Reality Checks” with the status of the larger, long-term plant residents in your garden. Give them the respect and care they deserve, for they will most likely be there long after you have moved.

Here is a link with excellent information and references for proper care for trees and plants, one of the Horticultural Heroines of our time; Cass Turnbull of Plant Amnesty.

For a VERY broad range of interpretations on this months theme for The Garden Designer’s Roundtable “Reality Check” please follow the links below for my fellow Knights and Ladies of the Roundtable below. They have been quite creative on this one!!

Does your garden have eye-catching focal points during the long months of winter? I hope the answer is yes! But, if not, this is the best time of the year to spend taking inventory of your gardens weaker points when it comes to structure or what we Designer types refer to as the “Bones” of the garden.

'Crimson Queen' Japanese Maple

This Maple sits outside my dining room, framed perfectly by the window. It’s stunning year round. They are covered in snow here, but in the pot are some stainless steel balls that look so cool! One thing that I always take note of this time of the year when I look at the deciduous shrubs and trees is their form. Do they need to be pruned for shape, directing growth or opening them up for more light?

Blooms from Hydrangea Paniculata Standard 'Angel Blush'

One of the beautiful things I appreciate in the garden are the summer plants that I leave for winter interest. I purposely leave the dried blooms on this Hydrangea because I adore the way they look in winter. Then I trim then back just as they bud out in spring.

Zebra Grass plumes in the snow

Miscanthus 'Morning Light' with Leucothoe 'Rainbow'

Another key element to consider when you are analyzing your winter garden and planning for spring planting is to note how much balance you have between your evergreen plants versus your deciduous or perennial plants. Do you need more of one or the other?

Pinus 'Thunderhead' with Miscanthus Zebrinus

The dark green of this Pine and the tones of the grass together with all of the texture is yummy!

This shot really spoke to me about considering the “Bones” the most. The pure white snow just makes it so stark and easy to concentrate on the shapes, lines, proportion and textures without the distraction of color. I recommend frequently that my clients stand back or go upstairs and take shots from a distance and print them in black and white for just THIS purpose. Without the distraction of color, you can really SEE the “Bones”.

Below, see my friend and Plantsman extraordinaire, Mitch Evans garden illustrating my point perfectly! From the entry arch to conifers, to PALMS? 🙂 to deciduous trees and shrubs, it’s easy to see the shapes and textures that are SO showy this time of the year!

Photo courtesy of Mitch Evans

Photo courtesy of Mitch Evans

Mitch uses these well pruned boxwood to expertly frame this Weeping ‘Camperdown’ Elm.

Even your Garden Art can get some attention for where it’s placed, how you view it, or what you have it paired with for it’s best showing.

Don’t miss your next opportunity to take a deeper look at your garden and evaluate the “Bones” this winter. Then when you’re hitting the ground running in your spring garden, you will know exactly where to start!